The Crimson Beloved

Hello Readers!

Thanks for swinging by and checking out this blog post! Today is Sexual Assault Awareness Day. This is a guest post from a very strong woman who was willing to share her story.

~Nichole

I call myself the Crimson Beloved because I love the colour red and the meaning of my name Amy is Beloved.  I am covered with God’s crimson coloured grace.  Without His grace, I can do nothing.  I am a child of God.

So, why have I started blogging?  I write out the story that God has given to me as a testimony to the Lord.  If He wills it, then these cyber bread crumbs will be found by woman like myself, who seek to follow God’s will in their lives.

Who are these woman? Woman who have been raped and sexually assaulted as children.  You won’t find me ranting about or hating on my abuser. Actually, I’ve forgiven him. Yeap, he’s forgiven. That will come as a shock for some of you but it is possible and it is on-going.

Forgiving my abuser almost seems easier than learning to forgive myself and leaving it all behind.  That’s where the “on going” part comes in.

Daily I’m learning to walk the path that God has laid for me to move past having a victim mentality to learning to be a survivor into His glorious life for me.

That leads me to the beginning of my story.  My childhood.  Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning, my parents loved me.  Of this I never doubted!  In fact without even meaning to they put that love right into my name.  Amy means Beloved.  I am their beloved child.  Amazingly enough, I knew that from the beginning, through the worst that Satan tossed at me and even now, the richness of being beloved is ever present.

Song of Solomon 2:16 (New American Standard Bible)

“My beloved is mine, and I am his;
He pastures his flock among the lilies.”

As a child I believed that verse was mine! In my mind I read it as I belonged to God, and He is my God.  I felt Him call me, specifically me to his side.  I know that God is calling us – everyone of us to His love.  But I believe that God placed a passion for the meaning of names on my life early to remind me often that I was His child. I believe that God sealed that knowledge of His love in me at a very early age because He knew I would need His love to carry me through the winter road ahead.

God planted me into my family.  It’s a cozy flower bed with 4 generations of God-fearing, Christ loving believers.  We are all a little nuts. But that’s the best part of this family, you never know who is going to do what next!  My families flower bed was planted deep into our church community.  Other than preach, we did it all. Come to thing of it we even had a preacher in our family although I was too young to ever hear him preach.  I though every child spent Saturday’s vacuuming the church for Sunday morning! LOL.  It was great growing up there, I’ve taken my children back to see where I grew up a few times. Oh the memories!

Unfortunately, like many other children my family met my abuser at my own church.  He was a teenager. His sister was hired to babysit us and he came along. To play.

I never told my parents what happened until I was married and had a child.

They were shocked. Angry.

That was one of the hardest days of my life.  I felt I had hurt them by not trusting them enough to tell them when I was younger.

It was definitely a winter phase of my life. But remember after the winter, spring always comes!

Before I married my wonderful husband, I told him I had be sexually abused. Raped. I told him because I couldn’t move into this marriage with something so overwhelming enveloping me without his knowing.  I felt like my mind was overrun with horrid thoughts and it was!

Psalm 27
1 The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.

Satan was having a hay day with me.  He had me almost convinced that I asked for this to happen when I was 7 years old.  He played mind games on me and had me spinning in such a state that I couldn’t see straight, unless I was angry. Then I could see just fine to beat my little sisters up.  My parents couldn’t understand where this anger was coming from, I had given them no idea as to what had happened to me.  It was like a light switch was flipped.

So, 10 years later I told my soon to be husband what was really inside of me.  I honestly thought he would flee for the hills.  I guess I used this information as a test.

Would he leave or would he stay.

He didn’t do either.

He wouldn’t leave me, this farm boy loved his city girl. But he wasn’t about to stay with me in my anger and pain.  He sought help for me and for our marriage through our pastors we received Christian Premarital Counselling.  Have I mentioned today that I love him???

But I still hadn’t told my parents.  That was to come later.

As a child I couldn’t explain the pain in my heart from being sexually assaulted.
So, I didn’t speak out, which allowed Satan the chance to scream all sorts of horrid lies at me.  As an adult I started to dissect those lies and see them for what they really are.

One of the lies that Satan convinced me of was that I asked for this to happen.  I truly believed for years that I had somehow conveyed to the young man who assaulted me that I wanted the abuse to happen.

Put on the brakes here!!!  I was 7 years old! I didn’t even understand what sex even was yet!

How on earth could a 7 year old ask to be raped?   It was a lie from the pit of hell.

Once I started praying for God to heal me, emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally. God provided that healing.  But He expected me to trust Him.  To love Him.  Every time, I stepped out in faith and trusted Him, He provided for me.  God started showing me the lies that I was believing and every time I released that lie, God’s truth flooded in its place.  God’s healing truth is better than any medicine.

Am I perfect, NO.

Do I make mistakes, YES!

Is God doing a glorious thing in me, Yes and Amen!

But God doesn’t expect me to do this on my own.  In fact in Mathew 18:20 He encourages us to gather together with friends.

 “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

Matthew 18:20 (NIV)

Would I have understood the gift of God’s peace in our lives? One of the feelings I had to learn to accept from God was Peace.  I didn’t understand what it meant to feel peace or peaceful until I had been filled with the Holy Spirit as a teenager.  I didn’t understand that peace was something I was even missing! Until that point, I had lived in a constant state of heightened alert.  I felt like I was a secret agent always evaluating the risk factors of every movement, word and facial expression of those around me.  Even now God will show me that I have slipped in my old ways of being on heightened alert.  His Holy Spirit will breathe into my spirit peace when I surrender my desire to be safe physically, emotionally and spiritually to His ability of actually keeping my safe.

Psalms 4: 1

Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; to me and hear my prayer.

Psalms 4: 7-8

You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. abound. I will lie down and sleep

People ask how I can be at peace with what happened to me.   I find my peace in God because this happened to me.   I understand what happened was bad but I know that my God is my Comforter.  He has a master plan for my life.  I can’t see what the whole blueprint it, I can’t imagine what it is He’s doing with my life.  But I am beginning to understand what peace looks like in my life.

I can’t see what the whole blueprint it, I can’t imagine what it is He’s doing with my life.  But I am beginning to understand what peace looks like in my life.

Peace to me is simply summed up as the absence of strife.  Webster’s Dictionary defines it as: a state of tranquility or quiet, freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions, harmony in personal relations. Either way, when the Holy Spirit covers me and fills me with peace, I feel safe, secure, loved and full.  The peace that the Holy Spirit brings is better than any chocolate!

What about you? Through your trials what lessons have you learned about yourself and God?